Switch Off Living Room Lights With Your TV?

In a few years, Samsung Electronics ' new Internet-connected TVs might come with an extra function that you may not have expected: switching on and off living room lights.

“It will be a new interface that drops the usage of cursors, allowing the user to point to objects that exist beyond the TV screen,” Kim Seok-joong, the chief executive and founder of the start-up behind the technology told The Wall Street Journal in a recent interview.

VTouch executive testing the company’s gesture-control software.

Min-Jeong Lee/The Wall Street Journal

Kim and his company, VTouch, are currently in talks with Samsung, bidding for a deal to supply a gesture-control software solution to the world’s top TV manufacturer. The Seoul-based startup also recently won an undisclosed amount of investment from another Samsung affiliate. A Samsung Electronics spokesman declined to comment.

For Samsung, television sets have long been in need of a makeover that goes beyond adding curves to its design. TVs, which accounted for 17% of the company’s fourth-quarter revenue, haven’t been a profit driver for the company in a long time because of low margins and stiff competition. To bolster the company’s overall consumer electronics business, Samsung has been touting the concept of what it calls the “Smart Home,” where all electronics devices connect to each other over wireless networks, allowing the user to control them from remote places.

VTouch, which stands for virtual touch, says that its software solution will enable getting rid of remote controls completely, with users relying on just the tip of their fingers to control their TVs and nearby objects like lights and stereo systems. Cameras embedded with special software will acknowledge the user’s finger movements to send signals to various connected devices, according to Kim.

The change, if materialized, would be an extension to today’s gesture-control features that acknowledge simple hand-waving commands like turning up the TV volume and sifting through the main menu. Samsung’s web-connected TVs have them dubbed as “Smart Interaction,” features.

But VTouch has hurdles to overcome, starting with the competition it faces with existing motion-sensor technology makers like Israeli start-up PointGrab which currently supplies similar software for Samsung’s Smart TVs. PointGrab is also working to get rid of cursors and is developing new software that allows users to rely on just fingers to control living room TVs.

Boosting accuracy for such features that rely on detailed motion gestures remains another challenge. Samsung itself has long struggled to come out with convincing features that make users go beyond the comfort zone of the touch screen or the remote control for hand gestures.

Kim claims that VTouch’s technology comes with enhanced accuracy by using a unique algorithm that tracks both the user’s eyes and hands, allowing the TV to filter false commands better than existing technologies that usually acknowledge just one body part. “Our target is to have our solutions on TV models coming out in 2016,” he said.

Other consumer electronics makers have also shown increased interest in motion-based technology as they seek to provide new user experience across home devices. In November, Apple acquired an Israeli startup called PrimeSense, which supports Kinect motion-sensing technology used in Microsoft 's Xbox 360 game console.